How Can Independent Movies Go Beyond The Characteristics Of Two Independent Films

On this essay I will be reviewing two independent films and how they go beyond the characteristics of independent film with particular regard to performance and beyond the basic definition. The two different movies that I picked were City of God, which is a movie about two boys growing up in the violence of Rio de Janeiro, and Babel, which is about how a couple overcome the difficulties that are presented on their vacation and how it affects other people. I want to start defining Independent film as a film that is produce outside the studio system, which means that the budget will be limited. This also means that getting a cast and finding funding sources will get more complicated.

First let’s focus on the movie City of God. This movie was produced, directed and released in Brazil. The dialogs in the movie are all in Portuguese and it demonstrates the culture from the favelas. This is why in order to produce this movie the director choose to have actors that have actually reside in the favelas in places like Vidigal and the Cidade de Deus (City of God) itself instead of having famous actors who would have a hard time

We can see this as just one scene but this scene is what people in the favelas live everyday. This is what makes people from Brazil relate with the movie and feel that it is really representing them. The fact that we have people in the movie who actually live in the favelas represent an actual happiness of getting the gas for free and not like people who could pay for the gas would feel, the moral conflict to take it or not. In conclusion we can say that showing a reality issue as how it is and not representing it with actors gives the movie the feeling of being a reality instead of just a movie. This also shows more relevance to the topic instead of being the story the only focus point of the